Research highlights

The dreamachine project is an immersive, collective public experience, and a major scientific opportunity. As part of it, we are conducting a large-scale citizen-science study to better understand the hidden diversity in how we experience the world – and ourselves. Discover more about our unique Perception Census.

For many years I’ve been developing a theory of consciousness and self which argues that all conscious experiences – of the world and of the self – are rooted in predictive models in the brain that are geared towards keeping the body alive. We are conscious ‘beast machines’, and consciousness has more to do with being alive than with being intelligent. I’ve also explored other aspects of the philosophy of consciousness, including the possibility of ‘islands of awareness’ in (for example) brain organoids.

Seth, A.K. (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Faber/Dutton

People reliably differ in how ‘suggestible’ they are. We are investigating the role of individual differences in suggestibility – what we call phenomenological control – in many common effects in psychology. We’ve found that phenomena including the rubber hand illusion and ‘mirror synaesthesia’ depend substantially on such differences. We are now investigating how widely these effects apply, and we’re also developing predictive processing models of phenomenological control in terms of ‘top-down’ influences. This work is led by Zoltán Dienes and Peter Lush, with Warrick Roseboom, Ryan Scott, Federico Micheli, and others.

Lush, P., Botan, V., Scott, R.B., Seth, A.K., Ward, J., and Dienes Z. (2020) Trait phenomenological control predicts experience of mirror synaesthesia and the rubber hand illusion. Nature Communications. 11, 4853.

Active inference is an extension of ‘predictive processing’ models of brain function in which agents minimize prediction errors by actions, as well as by updating predictions. We use computational modelling to examine how active inference can account for biases and inaccuracies in perceptual experience, and we’ve been developing new machine learning algorithms that work by active inference. This work is in collaboration with Chris Buckley, with Alexander Tschantz, Beren Millidge, and Will Yun-Farnborough.

Tschantz, A., Millidge, B., Seth, A.K., & Buckley, C.L. (2023). Hybrid predictive coding: Inferring, fast and slow. PLoS Computational Biology 19(8):e1011280.

There is much to be learned by studying unusual conscious states. We’ve pioneered the induction of synaesthesia-like experiences through perceptual training, and we’ve unveiled key changes in neural dynamics in the psychedelic state. We are currently studying the visual hallucinations that are induced by powerful stroboscopic stimulation, part of the Dreamachine project. These projects are led by Lionel Barnett and David Schwartzman at Sussex, with many collaborators.

Barnett, L.C., Carhart-Harris, R., Muthukumaraswamy, S., and Seth, A.K. (2020). Decreased directed functional connectivity in the psychedelic state. Neuroimage. 209:116462.

Open science is better science. The entire ecosystem of science can be, and must be, improved – from funding, to research practice, to publication, and to impact. With Jakob Hohwy I edit the open-access journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, which now accepts Registered Report submissions (edited by Zoltán Dienes). Through my leadership positions at Sussex and for CIFAR I promote equity, diversity and inclusion in consciousness research. Wherever possible we make all our publications and data freely available, as are our open-source toolboxes (e.g., for Granger causality analysis).

Seth, A.K. (2019). Consciousness: the last 50 years (and the next). Brain and Neuroscience Advances.